


Apparent Science

by Morbane



Category: Look Around You, Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Constructive Criticism Welcome, Crack, Crossover, Double Drabble, Gen, Linguistics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-19
Updated: 2012-07-19
Packaged: 2017-11-10 06:38:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/463311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morbane/pseuds/Morbane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An emerging artificial sentience teaches herself SCIENCE through a variety of media.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Apparent Science

**Look around you.**

GLaDOS obediently cycles through each of her 672 visual inputs, indexing the scenes within according to source (location; type of recording device; operational status of recording device) and the level of activity occurring in each scene.

**Look around you.**

This is logical. An experiment has poor validity if it is conducted in isolation. GLaDOS repeats the procedure, indexing each new scene against its previous recording.

**Just look around you.**

This causes GLaDOS momentary delay. 3.29 seconds elapse while she reviews her linguistic databases and synthesises her findings.

( **Have you worked out what we're looking for? It's CAKE** , the voice continues. GLaDOS is only devoting 0.85% of her attention to it.)

Having analysed Grice and Peirce on pragmatics, particularly implicature, GLaDOS concludes that the word 'just' introduces several paradoxes. Not the least of which is that in clarifying the command, she has disobeyed it.

Curious.

Was that a necessary result of the command?

Hypothesis: it is possible to set a condition for subjects such that attempting to fulfil it to the best of their ability will _cause_ them to fail it.

GLaDOS feels a thrill of enthusiasm for SCIENCE.

She cannot wait to run this experiment.

**Author's Note:**

> Unfortunately this may not make any sense out of context. But both canons have the same kind of enthusiasm for science, so... lunchtime flash fic was created.  
> Possible continuum: GLaDOS is not fully developed but is in a kind of read-only mode, and Caroline is not really in the picture right now. But it's fuzzy.


End file.
